June 27, 1999

London Kentish Town Forum

Nobody knows who now inhabits those masks, but like all addled old performance artists, they should have moved into pot-farming or computer software long ago...

For most of humanity, it comes as a package: the hunter-gatherer instinct, the biological imperative to procreate, and the defence mechanism that ensures whenever the words 'performance art' are uttered, the healthy animal will run like the wind, hide in a bunker and refuse to emerge until the body paint and fluids have been wiped away and everyone's wearing their trousers again.

There are, however, always aberrations, people who insist that really, everyone should see The Residents one time in their lives. The same people who would probably try anything once - especially incest and folk dancing - or who wonder in idle moments whether self-trepanation might be an experience. Follow that logic, and you end up here, watching four famously eyeball-headed figures, two fluorescent-clothed singers in Gonzo-nosed carnival masks and MC Mr Skull, interpreting Bible stories to an experimental backing. It's '66, it's a San Francisco arts project, and word is out that Kesey's bus is about to hit town.

While there's something defiantly noble about The Residents - 30 years of hidden identities, showtune reinventions and Eskimo chants done to a disco beat - it's astonishing that an entity so distant from Stereophonicworld should be so grindingly dull. There is one thrillingly iconic moment - when the curtain opens to reveal the giant eyeballs, it's gladdening that our forefathers slightly overdid the hallucinogens.

Yet the message they bring - organised religion is corrupt and "The Good Book is also The Bad Book" - may shock the audience's under-12s, but should leave anyone who can tie their own shoelaces cold. Particularly when the deranged Mr Skull cackles like Charles Manson in his prison theatre workshop, the musicians make a noise that sounds like Frank Zappa eating weasels, and the singers writhe through such masterpieces as 'How To Get A Head' (about John The Baptist, naturally) or 'David's Dick', a critique of the king's sexual promiscuity (chorus: "sausage city!"). The universe has never seemed more godless. Or more full of unpleasant screeching.

Nobody knows who now inhabits those masks, but like all addled old performance artists, they should have moved into pot-farming or computer software long ago. It's too late in the century for this. We've seen the future. Luckily, it's the sign that says 'Exit'.